Wednesday, September 07, 2005

A Book

Sometimes, trembling with cold, I would go to a soda fountain and order a Bilz. I would sit on a bar stool and gaze all misty-eyed at the droplets running down the surface of the bottle, while somewhere inside me, a bitter voice was preparing me for the unlikely spectacle of a droplet climbing up the glass, against the laws of nature, all the way up to the mouth of the bottle.

. . .

It was around that time that I met Mr Raef and, a little later, Mr Etah . . . I think they had a clam-tinning plant and shipped the tinned clams to Germany and France.

. . .

Pigs suffer too, I said to myself. And immediately I regretted that thought.

If ye guttes be fallen on ye ground yt it be foule / thanne lay it in warm gootys mylke / & clense it therin / & than put it agayne in to ye belly.

~

The mannys yarde is a plowman of the nature of mankynd / and is also a waye of the vryne / & is made of skynne / musclus / vaynes / senowes / and grosse stryngys / and it is plantyd vpon the bone Pectinis / and ye bondys com from the bone Sacris / or holy bone. In the yarde be. ii. pryncypall wayes or pypes / the one for the sede / and the other for the vryn. The ende of the yarde is namyd Ballanum & the hole is namyd mitra. The fyrst ouergoynge skynne of the yarde is prepucium / and the yarde is commonly. viii. or. ix. fynger brede longe / and must be of resonable bygnes / accordynge to the quantyte of the matrix or moder. Permenium or Peritonium is the place betwene the ars and the yarde / the whiche is a seme that foloweth the lyne of the yarde.